The Eve of Saint Hyacinth

Chapter Eighteen

Timothy said, ‘I’d lower my voice if I were you. You’re talking treason as well as nonsense. But even if what you say were true, do you think His Highness could persuade his lords and captains to agree? You know full well that Duke Richard, for one, would never be party to such a betrayal of the people’s trust.’

‘And that’s my point,’ I cut in swiftly, moderating my tone as Timothy had advised. ‘But first, reflect upon the others surrounding His Highness: that noted turncoat and spendthrift, my lord of Clarence; the Queen’s brother, Earl Rivers, and her son, the Marquess of Dorset, reportedly profligates both and always in need of money; the King’s bosom friend, Lord Hastings, yet another spendthrift by what I’ve observed of him; John Morton, a man who, to judge by his shifty glance, is eager to stir up trouble wherever and whenever he can; and all the rest of the court. Do you think any of them so high-minded that they could resist a bribe? Or, more importantly still, do you consider that any one of them has sufficient influence over the King to force him to change his mind once he’s made it up?’ Timothy slowly shook his head, his attention caught and held. ‘Of course you don’t. Except …’

‘Except Duke Richard,’ my companion whispered hoarsely.

‘Duke Richard,’ I repeated, ‘who has remained totally loyal to the King throughout his life, whose opinion His Highness values, whose good regard, I suspect, is as necessary to him as breathing. And this same man is the very one who would try with every means at his disposal to persuade the King against the course he’s set his heart on. King Louis would know this. How much easier, therefore, to remove, if possible, the obstacle in his path rather than trust to chance that King Edward will not heed his brother?’

Timothy chewed his bottom lip. ‘But why by the Eve of Saint Hyacinth?’

I shrugged. ‘How do I know? Maybe it is about that time, Saint Hyacinth’s Day, that the two kings have agreed to reveal their hands.’

‘Yes… You mean they’ll both play out the charade of going to war for a certain period…?’ He broke off, spluttering. ‘W-what am I saying? This is a farrago of nonsense from an overheated brain! Why am I listening to you?’

‘Because I’m offering the only plausible explanation you’ve yet heard for the threat to Duke Richard’s life.’

‘Psha!’ Timothy made a noise like a cat sneezing and waved his hands excitedly. ‘What proof do you have?’ But when I had given him my evidence he was even more dismissive than before. ‘Is this all? It’s nothing, chapman, and well you know it. There may be a dozen reasons for His Highness’s behaviour.’

‘Name one.’

‘His health may not be as good as it usually is. The strain of raising money for the invasion must have taxed even his great strength. Or it could be a woman. It’s no secret that he’s tiring of his present mistress, Elizabeth Lucy, and on the look-out for another. Perhaps the lady is proving more difficult to shake off than he imagined. Then there’s the constant feuding between Clarence and the Queen’s relations. Keeping the peace amongst them all can’t be easy for someone who likes domestic harmony. And then of course there have been two attempts on his favourite brother’s life. Although I doubt but what he’s accepted our lord’s version of events: a foiled attack by a madman and an accident.’ Timothy paused, casting around for anything else which might occur to him. Finally, he spread his hands and hunched his shoulders. ‘Well, there are four sound reasons for the King’s malaise – if indeed there is such a thing outside of your imagination.’

I finished my ale. ‘You hired me,’ I pointed out huffily, ‘to try to solve this mystery, yet you dismiss the one sensible solution I’ve come up with as nonsense.’

‘We-ell …’ Timothy began, but I interrupted him.

‘Listen, I have something more to say. Let us return to the murder of Thaddeus Morgan. Someone knew that he was to meet Lionel that night outside Holy Trinity Priory and followed him. There, that same someone learned of the following evening’s rendezvous which was to provide Lionel with the name of the Duke’s would-be assassin. Now, think! Who among your five original suspects had the best means of access to your secrets? To the fact that you, as His Grace’s Spy-Master, had become privy, through the Brotherhood, to the plot to kill Duke Richard?’

‘Well, who?’ he demanded petulantly.

‘Ralph Boyse, of course. The man you have always been sure was a spy for the French. He had a link directly to Lionel Arrowsmith. Berys Hogan!’

Once again, Timothy choked over his ale. ‘Lionel wouldn’t be so foolish as to talk to Berys Hogan about such important matters. You insult him. A good thing after all that Matthew isn’t here to listen to such slurs against his kinsman!’

I sighed. ‘A clever woman can wheedle anything from a man if she puts her mind to it. Think! Everyone kept warning Master Arrowsmith that he was playing with fire by courting Berys. She is affianced to Ralph Boyse, a man, you all said, of uncertain and violent temper. Yet Ralph showed no indications that I could see of jealousy, not even when he must actually have watched them together in a courtyard of Baynard’s Castle.’ And I told Timothy what I had witnessed. ‘Therefore I believe Berys was only following her betrothed’s instructions when she permitted Lionel’s attentions. Any information she could glean from him was passed on to the man she is really in love with. Whether or not she knew the reason for what she was doing I have no means of telling and in any case it doesn’t concern me. But there is your link between the French, the murder of Thaddeus Morgan and the plot to kill the Duke of Gloucester.’

I could see that Timothy was beginning to be convinced in spite of his natural disinclination to believe Lionel a prattling fool, or King Edward capable of such devious scheming as I had attributed to him. But neither could he deny that my arguments had a thread of reason and plausibility running through them, making sense of what had, until now, seemed a totally inexplicable problem. All the same, he refused to accept my explanation without a struggle and hunted around for further objections. After a moment or two he found them.

‘I’ve told you before,’ he said with relief, ‘that Ralph could not possibly have killed Thaddeus Morgan. He was known to have been inside Baynard’s Castle at the time. There are witnesses who saw him with Berys Hogan. Nor, and again I repeat myself, was he at Northampton when Thaddeus first sought me out. He could not have known of the visit.’

I ignored his first point and fastened on the second. ‘He had no need to be apprised of the plot because he was already a party to it. What he discovered, through Berys, once he had rejoined the Duke’s household at Canterbury, was that you were also now in the secret. It was a sad blow for him, no doubt, but as long as you had no idea from whence the danger came, or why it threatened, he had nothing to fear. But what it did was to make his task far more difficult, as security about the Duke was immediately tightened.’ I added, ‘Why did he tell Duke Richard a lie when he said he was going into Devon? He has never been there in his life. The interesting thing, therefore, is where he was, and what he was doing during his absence.’

Timothy wriggled uncomfortably on the bench, folding his arms across his chest and rocking himself gently from side to side. ‘You still haven’t explained Ralph’s presence in Baynard’s Castle the evening of Thaddeus’s murder.’

‘He has an accomplice,’ I answered slowly. ‘Ralph is not an assassin, he’s a spy and needs to be kept in place by the French, who are unaware that you already suspect him. There were two men whispering together that day in Baynard’s Castle. It was this second man who killed Thaddeus Morgan.’

Timothy swore softly, unlocked his arms and slewed round to face me. ‘I suppose that’s possible,’ he admitted grudgingly.

‘I think it more than possible. I think it highly probable.’

‘But in the name of the Virgin, who is it? Jocelin d’Hiver? I’ve never trusted those Burgundians and Flemings. They’re rightfully liegemen of King Louis. If the French hadn’t arranged for the murder of Duke Charles’s grandfather fifty years and more ago I doubt there would ever have been any rift between them. They say that the English entered France through the hole in John the Fearless’s skull.’

‘Maybe,’ I replied. ‘But I don’t think our man is Jocelin.’

‘Who, then?’ My companion’s voice was tense.

I hesitated for a second or two before I said with more assurance than I felt, ‘Matthew Wardroper.’

Timothy drew a long, shuddering breath. ‘Now I know you’re mad,’ he said feelingly, his tone lightening with relief. ‘Young Wardroper came to us as innocent as a newborn babe of all that had previously happened. I’d stake my life that he’s no more a French spy than you are. Than I am. By heaven, he’s Lionel Arrowsmith’s cousin!’

‘Birth’s no bar to a man committing treason, as has been proved often and often. Money is a powerful inducement in the game of treachery and double-dealing. The greed for gold has turned many a respectable coat in the past. Why should its lure be any less powerful in the present?’

Timothy peered into his mazer as if in need of sustenance, but finding it empty he leaned back against the wall and linked his hands behind his head. ‘Go on, then,’ he jeered. ‘I’m listening. Tell me why you suspect young Matt. This, I suppose, was your reason for preventing him from coming with you this evening.’

‘I didn’t reach my conclusions either lightly or easily,’ I said almost guiltily. I spared a thought for Matthew’s parents, the eminently respectable Sir Cedric and his beautiful wife, then put them resolutely out of my mind and continued, ‘To begin with, as you already know, my footsteps were, by God’s grace, directed to Chilworth Manor in the same week that Matthew joined the Duke’s household in London. I neither saw nor spoke with Sir Cedric, but I sold Lady Wardroper a pair of gloves. At one point during the course of our transaction she broke into song, humming a stave or two of the verse before giving voice to a snatch of the refrain. “It is the end. No matter what is said, I must love.” You’ve heard it often enough.’

‘Not I!’ Timothy exclaimed. ‘I’ve no ear for music.’

‘Nor I, but I can recognize words when I hear them. Lady Wardroper told me that it was French, a Trouvère song called C’est la fin, especially affecting, she said, if accompanied by the little Breton bombardt.’ I paused for a moment with raised eyebrows, but Timothy made no response. ‘Ralph Boyse often sings it. It is one of his favourite airs and the instrument he plays is a Breton bombardt.’

‘Well?’ my companion demanded impatiently as once again I hesitated.

‘The goodwife of Sir Cedric’s shepherd mentioned to me that a travelling musician had passed that way the preceding month and had played for him and Lady Wardroper, lodging for the night in the guest hall at Chilworth Manor. The goody also mentioned that Matthew was then at home. “Kicking his heels” were her words, “and waiting to take up his new appointment in the Duke of Gloucester’s household.”’

Timothy frowned. ‘Are you saying…? Can you be saying that this travelling minstrel was… was in reality Ralph Boyse?’

‘It would have been about the same time that he was supposed to be in Devon, but his ignorance of the red earth around Exeter convinces me that he was almost certainly elsewhere. I think he was at Chilworth, close by Southampton.’

‘For what purpose?’

‘For the purpose of speaking to Matthew and giving him his instructions.’

Timothy wrinkled his nose like a dog with a suspect bone. ‘You’ll have to do better than that,’ he demurred.

A party of drunken revellers emerged noisily from the inn, shouting bawdy ditties and laughing inanely as they wound an unsteady path across the courtyard. Timothy watched their progress with a jaundiced eye.

‘They’ll be worse than that as soon as they set foot on French soil,’ he prophesied gloomily. ‘There’s something about foreign parts that brings out the very worst in Englishmen, however well-behaved and docile they are at home. They’ll be committing rape and rapine in every town and village they pass through. Some’ll be hanged, others flogged, but it won’t deter the rest of ’em. However, that’s not my problem, God be thanked. Go on then, chapman. Give me another reason for suspecting Matthew Wardroper.’

‘The two attempts to maim Lionel were both made after Matthew arrived in London and after Ralph had learned, again through Berys, that the plot against the Duke had been uncovered. The first try was a failure, Lionel only breaking an arm in the fall and being able to keep the rendezvous with Thaddeus outside the Priory. Somebody followed him that night and I’d be willing to stake my life that it was either Ralph or Matthew. Myself, I believe it was the former. Ralph would have had friends amongst the officers on the gates who would have let him in and out without too many questions asked.

‘Had Thaddeus been able to supply a name there and then, I don’t believe that either man would have lived to tell the tale, but unless absolutely necessary Ralph wouldn’t have wanted to risk murder on the open highway. As it was, the pair of them had to be prevented from meeting again the following evening and the second attempt to harm Lionel was more successful. The fall this time broke his ankle and Matthew was sent to meet Thaddeus in his place. Whose suggestion was that? Do you remember?’

‘Lal’s,’ was the prompt response. ‘So you lose that argument, my friend. Matthew knew nothing of the plot until we took him into our confidence.’

‘And played, quite by accident, straight into the conspirators’ hands. I’m sure that had you decided to go to the warehouse yourself, in Master Arrowsmith’s place, Matthew would still have got to Thaddeus before you. But you made things easy for him.’

Timothy digested this for a moment, then asked, ‘Do you have any other reasons for accusing young Matthew? You haven’t yet convinced me.’

I sighed, although I knew in my heart of hearts what he must know, too: that there was a great deal of guesswork and intuition in what I was saying, but very little substantial weight of evidence.

‘Two things. Firstly, Thaddeus had not been killed cleanly, but had obviously managed to struggle with his assailant after the fatal blow was struck. There was a bruise on his jaw where someone had hit him. Later, when we were all together in that room in the tower – you, me, Master Arrowsmith and young Wardroper – I noticed Matthew rubbing the knuckles of his right hand as if they were sore, but then I thought nothing of it. Secondly, there was something which bothered me about the finding of Thaddeus’s body. At the time, I was unable to decide what it was, and so, gradually, it faded from my mind. Recently, however, that unease has returned to haunt me and at last I think I know its cause.

‘The murderer must have realized that his victim was not quite dead when he left him. Dying, most surely, but not completely devoid of life. Why did that fact not worry him? Why did he not make certain that Thaddeus was despatched before your envoy arrived for the meeting? For how did he know when that would be? Thaddeus might still have been able to whisper a name: the name of his killer and also that of the man appointed to slay Duke Richard. It was a risk he dared not take unless he was in a position to control events. So that man, by my reasoning, had to be Matthew Wardroper.

‘The one thing he didn’t, of course, foresee was the arrival on the scene of myself and Philip Lamprey, but even then his luck held firm. Thaddeus died in my arms without having uttered a word. And as,’ I finished, ‘for the two attempts so far on Duke Richard’s life, who thought to inquire where Matthew was or check his movements during the masque? But we know where he was when Great Hal bolted. Riding behind His Grace.’

There was a long silence as my voice finally died away. The courtyard was quiet now. Only in the tavern itself were there sounds of conviviality and laughter. The shadows were beginning to lengthen as the sun sank behind the roofs of Calais and windows sparkled into life, lit by pale aureoles of candle-flame. In the west, the darkening sky was streaked with lakes and rivulets of clearest pearl, while far away beyond the walls could be heard the faint, bell-toned hushing of the sea.

Timothy stirred at last, reluctantly, as though returning to cramped and painful life after a deep and dreamless sleep. ‘You’ve no shred of proof to back these assertions,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing but what’s in your head.’

‘I know,’ I admitted. ‘But do you believe me? If so, then between us we might be able to think of something we can do?’

He got to his feet and reached down a hand to help me to mine. ‘Against my better judgement, against all reason, I believe you. As you say, the thing now is to get some proof.’ Another thought struck him, undermining his newfound faith. ‘But it was young Wardroper who saved the Duke when Great Hal bolted! Why would he wish to do that if he is our assassin?’

‘I think that the person who saved the Duke was the Duke himself,’ I answered. ‘His own horsemanship. His own quick thinking. Oh, I don’t deny it looked as though Matthew was the rescuer and I don’t doubt but what it seemed that way to Duke Richard. But there was a deal of confusion as they neared the edge of the ditch; a lot of tugging and pulling. From where I was standing, Matthew could equally as well have been trying to force His Grace over the brink. I wanted to get the Duke’s own opinion on the matter, but John Kendall denied me an audience this morning because of the Duke of Burgundy’s arrival.’

‘And also,’ Timothy said drily, ‘because he thinks you grow too bold and forget your station.’

I grinned. ‘That, too, I’m sure.’ I stretched my arms above my head. ‘By the saints, I’ll be glad when this is finished and I can get back on the open road again.’

We walked back to the market square and turned our feet in the direction of the Duke’s temporary lodging.

‘You’d give up a roof over your head, regular meals and pay, for the chancy existence of a pedlar?’ Timothy asked in disbelief.

‘Willingly,’ I answered. ‘You may enjoy this world of gossip and intrigue, where everyone spies on everyone else, where no one trusts any other, where the smiles are false and solemn words and promises are given only to be broken, but that’s not for me.’

Timothy shrugged. ‘Each to his own taste.’ He laid a restraining hand on my arm as we neared the street door of the merchant’s house. ‘Not a whisper,’ he urged, ‘to anyone of the doubts and suspicions you’ve voiced to me tonight. I refer particularly to your thoughts concerning the King’s intentions. If you are right, you would do well to let His Highness reveal them himself in the fullness of time. For if you are wrong you could be arrested for the crime of lèse-majesté.’

‘I shall be discreet,’ I promised. ‘I value my skin as much as you do.’

‘And where is young Wardroper this evening?’ Timothy asked grimly as we crossed the threshold, having produced the password and been acknowledged as friends by the sentry guarding the door.

‘I instructed him to keep an eye on Ralph Boyse.’

‘You did what?’ Timothy spluttered. ‘Knowing all you believe you know about the pair of them?’

‘His Grace is surrounded by his friends and at least three of his Squires of the Body,’ I soothed. ‘He’ll be safe enough until bedtime. I don’t imagine either Ralph or Matthew will do anything in the open unless forced to it. No murderer ever wishes to be caught. His own life is too precious.’

We could hear singing drifting down the stairs from one of the upstairs rooms. Ralph’s voice was uplifted in a gentle, pleasant air.

Timothy growled, ‘At least his mother was a Frenchwoman. What will be young Wardroper’s excuse I wonder.’

I noted that my words had not, as I had originally feared, fallen on stony ground, but had found fertile soil and put down roots. In that case God grant that I was correct in my assumptions and had not vilified innocent men, including King Edward.

‘What do we do now?’ I asked Timothy. ‘Without more evidence there can be no arrests. It would be no more than my word against theirs at present.’

He nodded. ‘We stick as close as a burr to His Grace and put as much distance between him and those two as we dare without arousing too much suspicion. Meantime, we think, and think hard, for some way to resolve the problem. Some way to prove to all the world that they are villains.’

I was shaken by a momentary doubt. ‘And if I am proved to be mistaken?’ I demanded.

‘Then no harm done, if much time wasted. You’ve told no one but me? Very well. No need to worry. You’re a good man, chapman. And one I’m proud to name as my friend. I shan’t betray you.’